Finding Bliss

Find­ing Bliss — We’re work­ing through some ideas around liv­ing from a more authen­tic ver­sion of your­self. Today, let’s look at this through the lens of bliss.

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Last week, we talked about Get­ting Unstuck. Today, let’s have a look at bliss.

Here’s a def­i­n­i­tion of bliss:

supreme hap­pi­ness; utter joy or contentment

The key words are “supreme” and “utter”

The con­tent­ment and hap­pi­ness that occurs with bliss is not con­di­tion­al, lim­it­ed, or linked to externals.

As I wrote last week, the essence of who we are is already com­plete and present in us—although much of the more ‘inter­est­ing stuff” has like­ly been locked away in our sub­con­scious or unconscious.

Bliss is who we are

Bliss might be seen as what is left over after we stop mess­ing with our­selves. This was main­ly the Bud­dha’s point. The trou­ble we get our­selves into, the despair, the judge­ments, the longing–all come from the games we create.

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Here’s a story from my (out of print) book,
Stories from the Sea of Life:

Just a Note! Back in 1994, My first book, Sto­ries From the Sea of Life was pub­lished. It’s now out of print, BUT is avail­able as a pdf file. If you’d like to read more of the sto­ries con­tained there­in, amble over to my book site, The Phoenix Cen­tre Press. Once there, sub­scribe to the site’s mail­ing list, and you’ll get the pdf for FREE!

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This is how we create our dramas.

Randy was a wise soul, who taught me many things in his short life, (he was also phys­i­cal­ly short, but I digress…) 

In gen­er­al, he was incred­i­bly sta­ble (despite the real­i­ty of his life—coming out in 1969—no mean feat—and ulti­mate­ly con­tract­ing and dying from AIDS…) and gen­tly focussed.

He did every­thing calm­ly and with verve.

And then, along came this paper.

Randy, get this, was a Straight A stu­dent. He nev­er broke a sweat. So, what happened? 

I don’t know what was going on in his head, but the “affect” was that he was morose, was­n’t eat­ing, not sleep­ing, sigh­ing a lot—he was tor­tur­ing him­self. He’d gone from bliss to hell.

I guess I was born a therapist, as I knew I’d be doing this work from a young age. I, however, had much to learn. 

I want­ed him to see that there was no issue, and so, for 3 weeks I point­ed out the flaws in his log­ic. No soap, as he was spend­ing 24/7 build­ing up the sto­ries of doom and failure. 

He’d say, “You just don’t under­stand!” And he was right. What he was miss­ing was that he did­n’t under­stand. The paper was neu­tral. His sto­ries were killing him.

Actions Speak

So, that last last night, I had an epiphany. I real­ized (and con­tin­ue to real­ize…) that sto­ries are pow­er­ful. Par­a­lyz­ing, pro­found, and painful. (allit­er­a­tion 101) 

I decid­ed to shift gears and head in anoth­er direc­tion. I decid­ed to shock to his sys­tem by remov­ing the obsta­cle, so he could see his sto­ries and games.

So, I broke a hard and fast rule: “Wayne never cheats.”

I wrote the paper for him, and left it on his desk. He came in, read it, and I just watched. The change was fas­ci­nat­ing. His eyes filled, he looked at me and said, sim­ply, “Thanks!” With­in a minute, his smile was back.

Now, my point is this.

Things don’t change because you want them to, and don’t change if you sim­ply stare at them and hope. 

When we elim­i­nate or “dial down” the fan­tasies, sto­ries, dra­mas and games, we find the bliss of “what is.” From there, we can do any­thing, Thus:

Bliss is the lack of stories, or better put, it’s simple reality, writ large.

You must shift your think­ing, your judge­ments and your per­cep­tions of what’s going on. 

Now, you could argue that I shift­ed Randy per­cep­tion of the sit­u­a­tion, but that is inac­cu­rate. I had exact­ly a 50/50 chance with my ploy. 

I knew that throw­ing log­ic at him had not worked. I could have kept try­ing what was­n’t work­ing (as many of you are now doing the things that are not work­ing for you…) or I could shift my behav­iour… and see.

This time, Randy chose to shift him­self. The paper I wrote him was not sal­va­tion, it was a catalyst. 

This is what excel­lent teach­ers, great ther­a­pists pro­vide: games, shifts, pokes and prods. What you choose to do with the “prod” is entire­ly up to you. 

In a sense, the appear­ance of that paper allowed Randy to pause. In the pause, he chose to stop blow­ing smoke, and to see through the “doom and fail­ure” story.

Bliss is life, unpacked.

Bliss just is. Right here, right now. Our only job is to shock our­selves out of dumb com­pla­cen­cy and the stuck­ness of our stories—not into anoth­er sto­ry, but into being and pres­ence.

Most­ly, what we dis­cov­er is that “it is what it is,” and noth­ing much is hap­pen­ing. Once we see this, what is “right here” is perfect.

The top pic­ture of Dar­bel­la is from the Kitch­en­er Blues fes­ti­val. You might have guessed that we were out­side, in the rain. 

We were lis­ten­ing to the amaz­ing gui­tar play­er and singer Jeff Healey. The rain was per­sis­tent… and irrel­e­vant. We’d have missed some­thing amaz­ing had we packed up, or had we sat there feel­ing sor­ry for ourselves.

And if we’d wait­ed to “catch him next time,” we’d have missed out, as sev­er­al months lat­er he died.

Some­times it rains, some­times the sun shines. Some­times it’s dark, some­times it’s light. Some­times we are “up,” some­times down. It is as it is, it’s all as it should be, and beneath any of our sto­ries is bliss.

No mat­ter what.

Be your­self, live your tal­ent, make a dif­fer­ence, and drop the sto­ries. All of them.

Thanks for that les­son, Randy. I miss you.